Our second house was a 1963 brick ranch – a total break from our old farm house. It had some great features. First of all, it was built by the developer of our subdivision for himself so it was built really well. Second, no one in the history of the house screwed it up with poor renovations. In fact, no one did anything to it. It had original everything. So we did only what we felt HAD to be done to bring it into the modern chic retro house genre.
- We painted and replaced carpet throughout the house. A lot of houses in the 60′s were built for carpet, meaning there is only a subfloor under the carpet, no wood floors.
- We added new lighting – The house was so dark! One recessed light fixture in each room. Scary! We did recessed lighting everywhere – lots in the kitchen, new fixtures in the bathrooms.
- We renovated the kitchen – We painted the cabinets and installed new hardware so the drawers would slide like new ones. We also upgraded the appliances. I did the whole thing in bisque - appliance color, paint, even flooring – in order to brighten it up and make it look bigger. The kitchen is small (period). New houses have gigantic kitchens. It was the best I could do.
- Total landscape makeover.
This is the house before:
This is the view from our neighbor’s house:
This is what it looks like when a dump truck leaves 10 tons of limestone in your front yard:
That’s M on the right with our friend Mark. To the left of M is where the fountain will go. Remember what I said about water features and boulders?
M and Mark cart each individual boulder to the right place, then M has to position the boulders by hand to get them just right.
If you would like to see the end product, I made a little brochure when we sold the house. It has all the info >>
